(12/22 – 12/29)
Yikes. That was not what you would call a good week of television. As usual, the holiday tossed the broadcast schedule into disarray, and new scripted programming was mighty hard to find. The only thing that passed for regular programming was the CBS Sunday night. Elsewhere, it was a mish-mash collection of movies, reality, and game shows. The interesting bit of that is found in the numbers. In some cases it looks like the networks would be better off going with repeats, as opposed to cheap, albeit original, filler programming.
Because of the lack of programming, I’m tossing out the usual format this week, and just hitting on a few of the more interesting bits from the week. As mentioned, CBS did have one regular night of programming on Sunday. Password (9.52m/1.7) took over the Amazing Race slot, and led into Cold Case (11.9m/2.3) and The Unit (8.2m/1.9). Compared to most of the week, that looks pretty good. Although, the numbers for The Unit are starting to look a little suspect.
CBS stayed with repeats of their regular schedule for most of the week after that. And looking at what happened at the other networks, it was a good idea. NBC gave the Heroes/My Own Worst Enemy slot to an extended Momma’s Boys (5.01m/1.7). That was followed up later in the week by lackluster performances from It’s A Wonderful Life (5.29m/1.6) and Deal Or No Deal (6.44m/1.6). In addition, the Top Chef (2.58m/.8)experiment on Friday was mostly ignored.
ABC had similar troubles with their Tuesday double feature of Rediscovered (4.61m/1.4) and The List (2.89m/.9). The trouble continued on Wednesday as The Chronicles Of Narnia (4.49m/1.3) fell short of the usual Wednesday lineup, and was also knocked off by It’s A Wonderful Life.
For their part, FOX and CW just took the week off. The only new programming between the two of them was Prison Break (4.98m/1.9). Among other interesting numbers, a repeat House (6.25m/2.2) on Monday managed to top what original Terminator episodes have been doing. Things were mostly as you would expect for the CW. The numbers for Monday’s One Tree Hill (.83m/.3) repeat do seem a little low, but let’s chalk it up to the holidays and move on.
And we will be moving on to another rough week. Movies we’ve already seen (Pirates Of The Caribbean), will do battle with reality shows we don’t want to see (Momma’s Boys), and game shows people seem to be tiring of (Deal Or No Deal). The thin scripted schedule isn’t much help, offering only According To Jim, Eli Stone, Knight Rider, and Lipstick Jungle. Hopefully, Santa left some fun DVDs under your tree. I’ll be ignoring the networks for the week, and watching Twitch City.
Clacked by Brett Love 
on Dec 29, 2008 @ 10:00 EST5EDT
